Child marriage with parental consent is still legal in Wisconsin

Republicans have blocked Democratic efforts to change that

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Last month deep red Oklahoma became the 17th state to ban child marriage — the practice of allowing minors, typically 16- and 17-year-olds, to marry with parental consent.

“Oklahoma has a responsibility to protect children and make sure they have the opportunity to reach adulthood before making decisions that will shape the rest of their lives,” Republican state Rep. Nicole Miller says in a press release.

Most states that have banned child marriage to date are led by Democrats. Wisconsin, where Republicans control the Legislature, is not following their lead.

In Wisconsin 16- and 17-year-olds can still be married with written parental permission submitted to a county clerk along with a standard marriage license. Between 2015 and 2024, 297 minors were married in Wisconsin, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Notably, these teenagers can be married not just to other minors, but also to adults. State law also provides an exception to its rules on statutory rape: Sexual relations between an adult and a teenager are not a crime as long as they are married.

“These are marriages between a minor woman and an older man,” says state Rep. Ann Roe, D-Janesville, a co-author of recent legislation to ban the practice. “The behavior outside of marriage would be a felony.… Using this old law that’s still on the books that allows for child marriage is incredibly disturbing and incredibly dangerous for young women.”

In the 2025-26 legislative session, Roe joined state Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, in his yearslong campaign to end child marriage in Wisconsin. Each time, the legislation has died in committee. It has never received a public hearing, much less reached a floor vote. Republican leadership has refused to move it, saying the proposed law infringes on the rights of parents to decide what’s best for their children.

Incremental changes

The rules for child marriage in Wisconsin have changed over time. The 1849 Wisconsin statutes set the minimum marital age for men at 18, and 15 for women. Men under the age of 21 and women under the age of 18 still needed parental consent. By 1959, the minimum age for women was raised to 16. The law was amended again in 1971 to allow all men 18 or older to marry without parental consent, and women under 18 but at least 16 to marry with parental consent.

A change to the law in 1959 allowed a man under 18 to obtain permission from a judge to be married if it would prevent a child he fathered from being born out of wedlock. That allowance was quickly repealed in 1961.

The distinction between sexes was eliminated in 1975, and no changes have happened since.

In 2018, as the #MeToo movement against powerful, abusive men was gaining momentum, Delaware and New Jersey became the first states to ban child marriage. Fifteen more states have since followed suit, including Minnesota and Michigan. Bans on child marriage have been introduced multiple times since 2019 in Wisconsin.

Numbers decline

Statistics paint a picture of how this practice has declined over time in the state.

According to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, 27 minors were married in Wisconsin in 2024: eight 16-year-olds and 19 17-year-olds. That figure represents a steep drop from a peak of 421 child marriages in 1995.

Between 2010 and 2022, the vast majority of minors who married did so with adult spouses. From 2017 through 2019, every single minor who married in Wisconsin did so with an adult.

And from 1995 through 2013 (the last year for which gender data is available) girls made up the overwhelming majority of minors who married. In 2013, 23 16-year-old girls married, compared to just two boys the same age. Among 17-year-olds that year, the ratio was 39 girls to eight boys.

According to advocacy group Unchained At Last, those numbers are consistent with nationwide trends. The vast majority of minors married in the country are girls. Most of those girls married an adult male with the man on average being four years older.

“One of the things we wanted to look at is that, you know, is this young love? Is this two teenagers getting married?” Spreitzer says. “The answer seems to be primarily no. Primarily this is men over the age of 18, marrying girls under the age of 18. So that really heightened the concern.”

The law also includes a surprising twist: You can get married under 18, but you can’t get divorced.

Current law gives some provisions for minors to get an annulment, but there is no explicit statutory right for a married minor to file for divorce. Spreitzer and Roe’s proposed legislation would allow any minors married before their proposal takes effect to get a divorce.

Republicans oppose ban based on parental rights

Spreitzer and Roe’s legislation would prohibit marriage under 18 in all circumstances. More than a dozen states have passed similar outright bans over the years.

The Wisconsin effort was once bipartisan. Republican state Reps. Ken Skowronski, R-Franklin, and Chuck Wichgers, R-Muskego, were co-sponsors of the bill as recently as 2020. That support has since evaporated.

In February 2024, former state Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, sent a 2:59 a.m. reply-all email to fellow legislators linking the child marriage ban with restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors — a conflation that bill authors and advocates rejected.

“If you’re really serious about protecting minors I’ll add an amendment to also protect them from sex altering drugs and surgery and then cosponsor with you,” Macco’s email read.

Wichgers declined to comment on his previous support.

For a bill to pass into law, identical versions must pass the Assembly and Senate. After a bill is introduced, leadership in both chambers refers their respective versions to a relevant committee where it may receive a hearing and vote. If a committee chair never schedules a bill hearing, it can wallow until the legislative session ends.

During the most recent legislative session, the Senate and Assembly child marriage bills sat in committees led by Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, and Rep. Patrick Snyder, R-Weston. The bills died without a committee hearing, just as in past sessions.

Kapenga says he sees no reason to act.

“I cannot recall one constituent phone call or interaction where this issue has come up. I don’t have a problem with the current law that allows a 16- and 17-year-old to marry in the state of Wisconsin as long as there is consent from the parent or guardian. Parents know what’s best for their child — not the government,” he says.

Kapenga’s staff confirmed he has not received constituent contacts opposing child marriage, but other Wisconsin legislators, both Republicans and Democrats, have been contacted, according to public records.

Kapenga invoked a broader political philosophy to explain his position. “Frankly, we’ve seen an erosion of parents’ rights over the years by those on the left who believe that it’s the job of government to parent children,” he says. “Given the very low numbers of minors impacted, I do not believe this warrants the passage of this legislation.”

Cathy Myers, a spokesperson for Zonta of Janesville, a women’s advocacy group that worked with Spreitzer on the bill, says the decline in child marriage over time doesn’t justify ignoring the issue.

“We believe this is a pretty easy issue to wrap your head around,” she says. “One child married is one too many.” 

Snyder didn’t respond to a request for comment. Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, deferred to Kapenga’s comments. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to requests for comment.

Supportive but silent

Spreitzer and Roe say they have heard privately from Republican colleagues who agree with the goal of ending child marriage, but will not say so publicly.

“I think there are many people across the aisle on several different issues, this being one of them…they nod their heads, they look at me, they’re like, ‘We get it, this is an issue,’” Roe says. “And I think when hopefully they feel less obligated to fall into lockstep with their current leadership, I think that offers us an opportunity to have better conversations and figure out how we can work together.”

Spreitzer says he hopes that some of the Republicans who believe in banning child marriage “would start moving that conversation forward within their own party. That’s how we build progress.”

Myers says her organization heard from supportive Republicans during a lobby day at the Capitol this year.

“Several legislators said they didn’t know that children could be married until we met with them,” Myers says. “However, several also said that until they get the green light from their leadership, the bill would not get to the floor and would not become law.”

Long-term consequences

Advocates say the consequences for girls are lasting. Roe describes a possible trajectory: a teenage girl, newly married to an older man, denied the normal social activities of a 16-year-old and cut off from educational and career opportunities.

“The intentions of that older man are not to establish more freedoms for this young woman,” Roe says. “This is a form of potentially trafficking. This is a form of dominance. That’s just not healthy.”

Studies have linked child marriage among girls to poor mental health outcomes, diminished educational opportunity and higher rates of poverty.

Lauren Papp, a UW-Madison professor of human development and family studies who studies intimate relationships and family dynamics, says adolescence is the wrong time to make a permanent legal commitment to another person — not because teenagers are incapable, but because they are still becoming who they will be.

Papp disagrees that parental consent provides a safeguard because parents may not be privy to all of the relationship dynamics. She, Roe and Spreitzer all note there can be an imbalance in power dynamics between a child spouse and an older partner who is legally an adult.

“That is certainly just an extra layer of dependence on others,” she says. “There’s a whole host of ways that the younger person could be disadvantaged.” 

This story was produced in partnership with the UW-Madison’s investigative journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative newsroom.